When Luiz Bonfa recorded Le Roi de La Bossa Nova in 1962, and En direct du Brésil, in 1963, one 12-song LP and one EP of four titles gathered together here on one CD, the Bossa Nova had definitively conquered the whole world. The composer of two of the main themes for the film Orfeu Negro, which was awarded the “Palme d'Or” at the Cannes Film Festival, Luiz Bonfa was no longer an unknown outside his native Brazil and so he was naturally one of the rare musicians invited to take part in the first Bossa Nova Festival held at Carnegie Hall in New York in November 1962, a concert that was both a society event and a major music-event worldwide.

The Bossa Nova, which might be translated as “a new way of doing things”, a little like the spirit behind the “nouvelle vague”, was an informal movement born on the beaches, in the apartments, universities and clubs that were the haunts of the “golden youth” from the zona sul, the bourgeois neighbourhoods of Ipanema, Copacabana and Leblon in Rio de Janeiro. The movement was forged around the singer Nara Leão, who was only seventeen, guitarists Roberto Menescal and Carlos Lira, and the lyricist Ronaldo Boscoli. In January 1959, when Chega de Saudade/Bim Bom appeared, a 78rpm record by João Gilberto, it sounded like a thunderclap in the stormy skies and it marked the official birth of Bossa Nova. A quiet revolution was beginning: people would sing and play the guitar differently.

In the face of the romantic pathos typical of the period’s songs, bossa nova, at once both a simplification of the samba and sophisticated musically, favoured intimate performance, melodic jumps, complex harmony and lyrics with a difference. Some of the movement’s songs were completely futile, but Newton Mendonça (a pianist and composer who died very young in 1960), Antonio Carlos Jobim, Vinicius de Moraes and Nara Leão found ways to express the depths of their souls in music as transparent as a dew-drop.

Reviews:

..A celebration of the brilliance of one of Brazil's most beloved artists and should a must for all avid collectors.Jazz Times-0806 read the full article